National Post

08 July/99

Toronto smoking debate fogged by junk science

By John Luik

Toronto's overblown rhetoric about its status as a world-class city will be put to the test today when city council receives a junk science recommendation from its Board of Health calling for a phased elimination of smoking in city restaurants and bars. The Board of Health's recommendation is based on an April report by the city's medical officer of health that reads more like a statement from the Flat Earth Society than a careful scientific analysis emanating from a "world-class city."

In her report, the medical officer of health attempts to provide the policy justifications for a city-wide ban on smoking by noting that "3,000 non-smokers die each year in Canada from preventable heart disease attributed to exposure to ETS" (environmental tobacco smoke) and "another 330 die from preventable lung cancer." On the face of it, these figures appear to provide a strong reason for city council to end public smoking.

But the figures -- indeed, the entire report and the recommendations that council must consider -- have all the hallmarks of junk science. First, the medical officer of health provides no primary scientific studies as evidence for her claims, despite the fact that there are now more than 70 such studies that examine second-hand smoke in relation to lung cancer. Rather than providing definitive evidence, the medical officer and the Board of Health simply assume that second-hand smoke is dangerous. And one of the most obvious signs that junk science, as opposed to genuine science, is at work is to be found in the ready willingness to portray as received truth what is in fact unsupported assertion.

Second, the totality of the scientific evidence on ETS lung cancer and heart disease does not support the claim that second-hand smoke is a health risk, either in public places or in occupational settings. In other words, it is not just that the Board of Health and the medical officer fail to provide any evidence, it is the more serious sign of junk science -- that they ignore the vast amount of evidence that is available. For instance, the basis of the public smoking bans that have taken hold in North America over the past eight years has been the 1992 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report that claimed second-hand smoke was a carcinogen. Yet that report was voided last year by a federal court in the U.S., on the grounds that it failed to provide any compelling scientific evidence that second-hand smoke caused lung cancer in non-smokers. Again, last year an agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), after an exhaustive, multi-centre European study, found no scientific evidence that second-hand smoke caused lung cancer in non-smokers.

What is particularly interesting about the WHO study is that it looks at "social exposures" to second-hand smoke, such as restaurants, something one would have thought particularly relevant to Toronto's proposed by-law. Finally, the totality of available studies about the risks of second-hand smoke exposure in public places and workplaces does not indicate that second-hand smoke is a lung cancer risk.

But there is a third, disquieting hallmark of junk science in the medical officer of health's report and the Board of Health's recommendations to Toronto council. Real science proceeds on the basis of argument and counter-argument, on the willingness to change one's mind in the face of new evidence. Junk science, on the other hand, refuses to give up its dogma whatever the evidence. Realizing that even if second-hand smoke was not a cause of lung cancer or heart disease, it still was a substantial irritant for many non-smokers and a potential source of respiratory problems for some, the Ontario Restaurant Association proposed a "ventilation solution" to the Board of Health. Under this proposal, restaurants and bars that have properly designed and functioning ventilation systems would be allowed to have unenclosed designated smoking areas.

Noting that the medical officer of health had claimed that "separate but enclosed spaces for smoking in public places is (sic) not health protective since ETS travels freely through the air," the restaurant association hired a ventilation expert, chemist and toxicologist to demonstrate in an existing Toronto restaurant that ventilation could eliminate ETS from non-smoking areas. Its report, submitted to the Board of Health but ignored in its recommendations to council, indicated that with ventilation, a non-smoking patron in a Toronto restaurant that permits smoking in a designated area will receive less ETS exposure than the background levels experienced by people in the U.S. who neither live nor work with a smoker -- in other words, negligible exposure. More importantly, the report indicated that a ventilation solution would result in a "substantial improvement in overall indoor air quality by eliminating a large percentage of non-ETS-related air contaminants.

Why, then, in the face of compelling scientific evidence that ventilation could solve the nuisance factor of second-hand smoke and improve the overall indoor air quality of restaurants, would the Board of Health stubbornly cling to its junk science view that second-hand smoke kills, and smoking must be banned? The answer, of course, is to be found in the nature of junk science itself, for at bottom, junk science is really about ideology rather than truth. In fact, buried in the medical officer of health's scientifically challenged report is the admission that this debate has nothing to do with science: She notes that public smoking restrictions "also help reduce smoking rates by reducing the number of places where people can smoke." It's not really important what the science says, as long as we can make it tough for people to smoke.

And what, it might be asked is wrong with what? Nothing and everything. Nothing, if the objective is openly acknowledged and individuals are allowed to make up their own minds. Everything, if the only way to make it tough to smoke is to use science to lie.

At the end of the day, the most important issue at stake today is not whether people can smoke in Toronto restaurants, but whether the city is prepared to base public policy on junk science. The wonderful thing about science is that in the midst of all the subjective cut and thrust of the public policy process, it provides one of the few reasonably objective measures of what is true. By allowing junk science to pass as genuine science and provide the basis for social regulations on smoking or anything else, we not only devalue science but risk losing our single most valuable resource in the public policy process.

John Luik is the co-author, along with Gio Gori, of Passive Smoke: The EPA's Betrayal of Science and Policy, recently published by the Fraser Institute. During the recent smoking by-law debate, he has acted as a consultant for the Ontario Restaurant Association.; Financial Post welcomes authoritative articles on business and economic themes. Please e-mail your article or article idea to fpsubmissions@nationalpost.com